


Here and Now

by Sangerin



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly
Genre: F/F, Threesome, Threesome - F/F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-13
Updated: 2008-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Live life as it comes to you,' Kaylee said.  'It may not be coming for much longer.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here and Now

**v.**  
Inara smiles at them, curled together on the bed in her shuttle – Kaylee behind Tara, an arm draped along the side of Tara's body. They're both asleep. Tara's naked breasts rise and fall gently as she breathes. Inara locks the door behind her so they won't be disturbed, drops curtains across the entrance, and treads softly through the shuttle as she prepares tea and brushes her hair and sees to her clothes. They always seem to need repairing, especially after some of Wash's better piloting escapades.

She'll wait until they wake up.

  
 **i.**  
In Sunnydale they had always wanted to know why. Why and how and how to keep bad things from happening again, or at least from happening in quite the same way. Here in the black, there so often wasn't time for questions. 'Live life as it comes to you,' Kaylee said. 'It may not be coming for much longer.' Everyone on _Serenity_ seemed to think the same way: none of them were particularly concerned by how Tara had appeared among them, once they'd decided she wasn't dangerous. The Captain only wanted to make sure she would pull her weight in duties; Simon to ensure that she wasn't an Alliance plant trying to trace River, and Jayne that her presence on board wouldn't cut into his share of the takings. Beyond that, they didn't care.

Tara did care, at first. Ripped out of her own world, landing on a space ship in a future when Earth no longer existed, it was natural to want to go back. And the only way to go back was to find out how she'd arrived in the first place.

But the arguments with Jayne and the Captain, Kaylee's gentle friendship, and a couple of jobs (during which she stayed on _Serenity_ with Book and River and Simon) and Earth and her old life began to recede into the background, except in the middle of the night when everything seemed so much worse.

  
 **vi.**  
Tara blushes when she wakes up and sees Inara moving slowly around the shuttle. She clutches at the sheets and draws them up to cover her nakedness.

'Don't be shy, _mei-mei_ ,' says Inara.

'We – we didn't mean to…' says Tara, nervous and stuttering.

Inara smiles. 'You may not have meant to, but Kaylee did, I'm sure.'

Tara's eyes widen. She's still clutching the sheet to her breasts, less tightly now.

Inara takes a green, floating robe from her closet and hands it to Tara, who accepts it gratefully and wraps it around her.

Kaylee has shifted and is stretched out across the bed. She moves in her sleep, kicking one leg a little. Inara crosses the room and sits down, whispering into Kaylee's ear, then she kisses Kaylee's cheek gently.

'She does have a tendency to kick,' says Inara, low and quiet to Tara across Kaylee's sleeping body.

Tara smiles, two women sharing a secret. 'I've got the bruises,' she says.

  
 **ii.**  
Kaylee crept into Tara's room in the guest quarters one night when she had heard Tara crying. She perched on the edge of the bed and stroked Tara's cheek.

'Poor dear,' she said. 'It can't be easy, out here in the black with all of us. Do you miss your people?'

She'd never quite managed to explain to Kaylee where she came from. Eventually it didn't seem to matter. The sudden tug she'd felt at her insides, the look on Willow's face, the shock of her body still being whole when she'd woken up with Zoe and Simon staring at her in amazement… just being alive was too much for her to understand, and because no one else seemed to care, she had decided not to, as well. But she still cried for Willow in the night.

'I miss Willow,' Tara said, still curled in her sheets, tears on her cheeks. 'My girlfriend,' she explained, and Kaylee's sympathetic face and arm around her shoulders as she sat up mean that she kept talking. 'We'd broken up, but I couldn't bear it. I missed her too much. I went back to her, and we were kissing, and I was crying, and then I was here.'

Kaylee's arm around her shoulders tightened.

'Tell me about Earth-that-was,' Kaylee said. 'You're like a fairy-story to me.'

So Tara told Kaylee about growing up on the plains, about their hard life on the farm. She told Kaylee about moving to Sunnydale, and meeting Willow and her friends, and the way her life kept changing.

Kaylee snuggled against her, like a child listening to a bedtime story. But she had a hand on Tara's knee, sliding slowly upwards.

Tara told her about the fights with Willow, and how alone she had felt without Willow's friends all that time, and then Kaylee kissed her. Her lips were soft and fuller than Willow's, but insistent, as Willow had so often been.

'I can't,' said Tara, turning her head away. 'I… Kaylee…'

Kaylee kissed her again, and slid her hand further up Tara's thigh, beneath the nightdress Inara had given her when Tara had first arrived on board. It felt so good to be touched and held again that Tara relaxed into Kaylee, accepting the kiss.

'Live life as it happens,' Kaylee whispered in Tara's ear.

'Not yet,' Tara said, with tears in her eyes and in her voice. She leaned back into Kaylee, kissing her and laying a gentle hand beneath her breast. 'Not yet.'

Kaylee smiled, and lifted her hand to wipe the tears gently away. 'Shall I stay with you?' she asked. 'Chase away the nightmares and the tears?'

Tara smiled and nodded. Kaylee curled up behind her on the narrow bed and held her through the night.

  
 **vii.**  
When Kaylee wakes up Inara and Tara are drinking tea together, sitting at a low table at the end of the bed. Tara looks like a fairy, floating in green chiffon with her hair loose. Inara is dark and regal in a long white robe, her hair piled on top of her head.

Inara takes Tara's hand in hers, and kisses Tara's fingertips before she gives Tara the delicate tea cup. Tara doesn't blush, but smiles shyly back.

Kaylee sits up in the bed, because she can't watch so well lying on her back. Tara turns towards but Inara puts up a hand and turns Tara's face back to her. Inara leans in to kiss Tara, and Kaylee smiles.

  
 **iii.**  
River reminded Tara of Dawn – like Dawn she was the odd one of the group, younger than all the rest. River had a knowing sort of air about her that Dawn had never had, but at the same time, she was more of a child than Dawn had ever been. She was more curious about everything around her, and far less tactful. River never knocked, whether it was Tara's quarters or Kaylee's she was running into. She could change from laughing to serious in a nanosecond.

She sidled up to Tara and put an arm around her waist. 'I saved you from the pain,' she said, her voice soft. Creepy. 'Brought you here before you ceased to be. No going back, though.' Then she had let Tara go and slipped away, silent and barefoot.

Tara walked through the corridors of _Serenity_ late at night. Simon was ahead of her, and they both tried to pretend not to see where the other was going. But Simon grinned at her from the ladder to Mal's quarters as she pushed open the ladder to Kaylee's.

She climbed down the ladder. Kaylee was waiting, arms out to embrace her, smile on her face. They kissed. They had become good at kissing.

'I still love Willow,' said Tara.

'I know,' replied Kaylee.

'But I'll probably never see her again.'

Kaylee nodded slowly.

Tara wet her lips and took a breath. 'I'm ready, Kaylee,' and Kaylee smiled her sweetest smile and kissed away the two or three stray tears.

'Live life as it comes to you,' said Kaylee softly, between kisses and as she began to undress Tara. 'You never know when it might come to an end.'

  
 **viii.**  
Kaylee sits behind Tara, wrapped around her the way she loves. She slips one hand beneath Tara's chiffon robe, and caresses her breasts with whisper-light fingers. Tara gasps into Inara's mouth and shifts subtly against Inara's hand. She's sandwiched between then, Kaylee and Inara holding Tara upright as the sensations built higher and higher.

'Seduction is only a success,' says Inara softly, 'when a person wants to be seduced.'

Tara goes limp in their arms.

They carry Tara to the bed, and lie down, one on either side. They kiss her and caress her, and kiss and caress each other, until Tara regains her energy and responds to them.

Kaylee laughs and Tara's eyes shine like stars, and Inara glows from within.

When they join the others for dinner River kisses Tara on the cheek.

  
 **iv.**  
Mal shouted at them when he stumbled over them kissing in corners. Jayne leered at them until Zoe threatened to shoot him, and River smiled at them like she knew a secret. She giggled when she ran into Tara's room without knocking and found them half-naked and tangled together, and Tara thought of Dawn and blushed and stuttered and pulled away from Kaylee.

When Kaylee put an arm around her in the meals area, Tara shied away, although she apologised later in private, in Kaylee's quarters, where they'd have more warning of intrusions from other crew members. But after a day or two like this, Kaylee pouted and took Tara's arm and led her down to Inara's shuttle, and pulled the door closed behind them.

'River won't disturb us here,' she said. 'And Inara has so many beautiful things,' she added.

'Inara won't mind us being here?'

'I'm always welcome, so long as she's not entertaining customers,' said Kaylee, 'and you will be too.' She drew Tara's hand to her lips and turned it over to kiss the palm and the inside of her wrist, making Tara shudder. She pulled Tara towards the bed, and loosened the waist of Tara's skirt, leaving it pooled on the floor with her own jumpsuit. Kaylee knelt down, kissing her way up Tara's thighs, while Tara tangled her fingers in Kaylee's hair.

Tara gasped. 'Going to fall,' she said, but Kaylee caught her and they landed together on Inara's bed. Tara opened her eyes. 'I've told you – I need something to hold me up when you do that.'

Kaylee laughed at her. 'Come here, darlin', let's try again. Only with you on your back this time…'


End file.
